Even though the nerf pains me as a wizard I am forced to agree with it. I've heard too many complaints of people on my server about mana burning wizard groups ganking their mobs. The only problem I have with the nerf though is that I think 1 minute is a bit long. It seems to me that if a raid with multiple MB wizards gets into some serious trouble they will need damage to be done or else. And in the case of a MB group of wizards even if the latency is 15 seconds between mana burns that would be plenty of time for a raid class mob to eat the wizard party in my opinion. Wizards don't take hits very well :P

Bisbus the gnome

I love everyone of these nerfs, they will bring more balance to the game. I just hope that they finally wake up and nerf druids. I mean ok, I am a druid, I can port, heal, buff, sow, snare, damage shield, nuke, dot, track, I get a pet, and to top it all off I can solo 4 experience giving mobs at once. Anyone stop to think why there are SO many druids running around? I seriously doubt it is for the roleplaying reason of being a protector of nature after grouping with many a druid.

let me guess you are a druid and to all the others that say its abouttime and this is fair i am guessing you are not getting nerfed and so hey lets get on the nerf bandwagon well when it comes time for them to nerf you remember its a great idea

What these changes are doing is exactly what Verant has said for the last little while that they wanted to do. EQ was not designed to be a solo game, it was designed to be for groups/raids, depending on the situation. There has always been some overlap between the classes for abilities, so that no one class should be "necessary". But there is always one class that is better at it than another. The changes aren't really nerfs but bringing things in line with what they were supposed to be by design. A group of 6 wizzies should not be able to take out a MoB designed to be taken out by 3 or 4 or more groups, Monks should not be able to MT, A classes signature ability should not come at 39 and people should not have unlimited mana.

Well the lesser of mana burn is good as was over powered, this may have to make them group with other classes now then just a group of them selves.
Cleric's have CH and other healing spells, with shm and druid 2700hp heals, they will fill in a bit while the cleric can med a bit.
I do not have a monk, but they should not be touched. The reason behind this is spliting uber mobs . I have been to ToV kael etc and they seem to die to much while setting up the pull for the group. They may be able to tank in low 50's and lower, but when it gets to higher end, they can not, and this is where they need to shine.

First, let me say that I play a 54 untwinked iksar monk as my main. I have an unbuffed ac of 1022, and I've worked hard to get there.

I know many shadowknights my level with lower ac . . much more than I know with higher ac. In xp groups, the healer (especially if it's a shaman) usually *prefers* that I tank over the shadowknight because I take less damage and cause us less downtime.

As a matter of fact, the ONLY reason that I (and many other monks) don't MA on raids right now is that we don't have enough hit points, so complete healing is much more effective on warrior and knight types.

So do I think lowering monk defense is fair? Yes, completely. But not by very much. Backstabbing rogues (with equivalently good gear) do more damage than monks. That's a fact, and that's the way it was intended. The tradeoff is that when they have to, monks take the hits much better than rogues. VI needs to be very with this nerf to make sure that monks tank worse than knights, but still better than rogues and rangers.

Which, speaking of rangers . . I think they need their defense nerfed as well. There has been a long standing balancing effect among melees and hybrids that classes that do more damage don't take the hits as well. Right now, rangers do far and away the most damage of any melee/hybrid with their bow. There are many rangers that get upwards of 120dps without the trueshot discipline. They hit for over 1000 damage, without using any mana, several times per fight, and have a sustained damage output time and a half that of most rogues, and as much as twice or more that of most other melees. In order to balance this out this much damage, rangers should pop like a water balloon when the mob so much as looks at them. I think it would be justified to put their tanking ability somewhere below priest casters, but above intelligence casters.

Either that, or there need to be no new bows or arrows at all in PoP so that the other melees can catch up to ranger damage.

What the wizards are up in arms about and What the clerics are upset about?

First, I have seen alot of wizards saying stuff like "You have ruined my class" or "You have just killed ANY reason to play my wizard anymore!" I even saw one wizard say something to the effect of "I will make sure I stop by Cazic Thule with my dubious faction to lizards, with any passengers..."

Now, tell me exactly HOW Wizard effectiveness was messed up with the Manaburn change? First, it was always on a refresh timer, so there was absolutely no way any single wizard could manaburn more than one time per minute anyway. Second, there is absolutely no change in the way manaburn works for one single wizard. You are still going to be doing the same damage in the same amount of time - how does this reduce your effectivness? The ONLY change to manaburn is that you now cannot have multiple manaburns on the same target at the same time - or more to the point, you have to wait 1 minute between manaburns - where you will have more than one MB wizard there. This is ONLY a SLIGHT - VERY SLIGHT - change in the way Wizards are used in raid situations - manaburn is not the end all - be all - saving grace of wizards, and raids, and experience groups.

Clerics - How many tanks do you know at this time that have more than 7500 hitpoints? You are all whining that now druids and shaman are able to heal as effectively as you, which is not true. The reality here is that clerics have and will contiue to be the best healer in the game. One quick point I wanted to make is that I do not think you will be getting a bigger heal than this - some have mentioned they believe that there will be a CH type spell added at the higher levels, I do not think this is true - VI has saind all along they do not like how encounters are run now - CH rotations, main tanking - a method of endurance, setting up timed healing rotations, etc. Adding another CH type spell will only do the same thing they are trying to reverse with this change to the CH spell now.

Secondly, CH is a spell gotten at level 39 - only clerics (as of right now) in top tier guilds will even come remotely close to hitting this 7500 point cap on the CH spell. Clerics at all points in the game are still, and will continue to be the best healers, and best hit point buffers and AC buffers in the game. Another point is that we have not seen what spells POP will be bringing to ground for clerics - sure we have seen what people have pulled out of the files, but there is no guarantee this is all, or these are what they will be. For all we know clerics will be getting smaller heals, that land faster, and with higher mana to hp ratios. CH is STILL the best mana to hp heal, AND best Hit Points Healed per second ratio when taking into consideration the 10 second cast time, and 400 mana cost. Better than any of the 50+ spells, and STILL better than any of the proposed 60+ spells - by a factor of 2 or more. In the POP spells, clerics are going to be giving up mana/HP ratios for faster casting spells - what does this indicate? You will be healing more in a predefined period of time - which indicates to me you wont even be using CH that much anymore on raids - why? look at supernal light - level 65 spell - heals for 2200 pts, for 690 mana in 5.2 seconds - this is 3.19 hp per mana, and 423 hp per second. (excluding focus effects of course) Heals like this far outstrip anything for hp per second than you have gotten before WITH exception to complete heal (CH STILL beats this, even AFTER the nerf). CH will STILL be highly viable in situations where you can set up a rotation, or have the tank stay alive for at least 10 seconds.

CH is still the best heal spell you will get, and still has the best mana/hp ratio, and best hp healed per second ratio. - this a spell that went live from the get go of EQ, has been in the game for now 4 expansions (including POP) and is attained at the MIDDLE of your career - how many other classes receive their class defining spell/skill so early in their career? Think about it - the level of power for clerics has not altered at all. rest easy!


Edited, Thu Oct 10 07:41:46 2002

What crosses my mind is that this nerf penalizes people who shouldnt be penalized. I am a casual player. I have a 55 druid and a 34 monk. Im not in a guild because I only play a few hours on saturday and sunday. And most guilds wont accept that. But my point being is Ill probably never have my monk with all this uber all/all gear. The equipment I plan on using into my 50's is pantherskin which is specifically for monks. So why penalize the casual players. Everquest has turned into such a power players game that their starting to make it no fun for the casual players. My monk twinked out with pantherskin has a hard time soloing a blue at 34. And I have never seen a Monk being MA on any raid. Most raids wont attempt anything without a good warrior for a tank. In short I think verant is hurting alot of players just to nerf a few elite/uber monks. Maybe I just haven't paid enough attention to high end monks and its all of them. But I dont think so.

Only thing that I would like to mention about monk thing(I'm a monk, shocking, no?) It's that all you people saying that monks are an offensive class that shouldn't ever take aggro need to just look at our disciplines and our Arch and Class AA's. Take a tally of how many are offensive and how many are defensive. Vast majority of them are defensive, and not only that, feigning to reduce agro at high levels doesn't work in normal raid situations. Mobs that are raid level after 50 will remember that you once you stand up a good 9/10ths of the time, and on top of that, since most of them have AoE's it isn't possible to stay down long enough to get low enough on the agro list to not have the mob that sees you basically as a sitting target, and by the time FD refreshes, yer dead from the damage.

ROFLMAO love the fine print Illia!

Edited, Thu Oct 10 00:58:43 2002